"Go back?"
Lefiya's voice carried a hint of a sob. She looked at the stone door behind them—now seamlessly sealed, looking as if it were a natural part of the mountainside—and then at the black-haired youth smiling innocently before her.
"The—the door is gone! How are we supposed to go back?!"
Tiona, surprisingly, didn't scream or shout. She simply stomped her foot hard and tried to swing her giant sword, Urga. That weapon, which usually felt light as a feather, now felt like it was weighted with hundreds of pounds of lead. Every swing made the muscles in her arms scream.
"Waaaaah... it's true! My strength is so tiny now..." She pouted, her face a mix of novelty and frustration. "I can't even jump high anymore!"
"Calm down, Tiona." Tione was the first of the four to force herself into a state of composure. She took a deep breath, her sharp gaze sweeping over the dilapidated surroundings and the distant, ominous giant castle. "Panic won't solve anything. Our physical abilities have been suppressed, but our combat experience is still there. This... this must be the 'trial' you were talking about, right, Mr. Linn?"
Her tone was heavy, and her eyes were full of scrutiny as she looked at Linn.
Only Ais remained unfazed from the start. Her golden eyes calmly watched Linn as she slowly drew her rapier. She gave it a light experimental flick, feeling the long-lost weight and the sluggishness of her body. Instead of fear, a spark of light ignited in her gaze.
"So this is... the trial," she stated, her tone carrying a note of realization. "In here, everyone starts at the same point."
"Pretty much," Linn shrugged, entirely unsurprised by their reactions. "If I'm being honest, I might even have a bit of home-field advantage. Alright, the trial is about to begin."
As soon as he spoke, several hunched, hollow-like soldiers wearing tattered armor peered out from the battlements of the distant wall. The objects they held in their hands made the pupils of Tiona and the others contract violently.
Those were massive heavy ballistae, comparable to small siege engines!
"Leave it to me!"
Before Tione could even shout "Watch out!", Tiona's battle-hungry instincts overrode her logic. Pushing aside the thought of her weakened state and relying on pure instinct, she kicked off the ground, lunging toward the wall like a cannonball!
"Ohohoho! Watch me blast you to—!"
Her boast was cut short halfway as a dull twang echoed from the wall. A giant bolt, thicker than her thigh, shrieked through the air, crossing a hundred meters in an instant!
"Wha?!"
Tiona's eyes went wide. Normally, an attack of this speed would look like a crawling snail to her; she had a hundred ways to dodge it or simply cleave it in two. But now, her body—suppressed to Level 1—suffered from a fatal delay in reaction speed and mobility.
She only had time to awkwardly twist her torso in mid-air.
Wham!
The bolt whistled past her shoulder, but the terrifying wind pressure it generated hit her like a sledgehammer.
"Waaaaaaaagh!"
The Amazon girl let out a cry as she was swatted away like a fly. She traced a pathetic arc through the air before landing face-first in a pile of rubble not far from the group with a heavy thump. A wisp of smoke drifted from her back.
"It... it hurts..." Tiona lay on the ground, twitching like a fish out of water. Her voice actually cracked with tears. "W-what the hell was that! Why does it hurt so much? I think my bones are breaking..."
"You idiot! Who told you to just charge in!" Tione's forehead throbbed with veins of annoyance. She rushed over, frantically checking her sister's injuries.
Fortunately, it was just a graze from the wind pressure—mostly superficial wounds—but her disheveled, dust-covered appearance held none of the grace of a Level 5 adventurer.
Lefiya's face went pale with fright as she ran to Tiona's side, immediately beginning a healing chant.
Meanwhile, Linn had already sprinted out.
He didn't charge in a straight line like Tiona. Instead, he stayed low, moving in an irregular zigzag pattern along the cover of broken stone pillars and ruins at the edge of the walls.
Twang!
Another bolt hissed toward him, aimed right at his chest.
Just a split second before impact, Linn's body rolled to the side at an angle that seemed impossible for a normal person. The massive bolt slammed into the ground right where he had been, kicking up a spray of stone fragments.
That hair's-breadth evasion made the hearts of Tione and Lefiya skip a beat.
"What is he doing?!" Lefiya cried out.
Linn didn't answer. His eyes were locked onto the ballista crew on the wall. After the second bolt was fired, he immediately caught the brief, fatal opening: the reload time.
Now!
He kicked off the ground, his speed exploding. He became a blur of black lightning, racing up the rugged slope to the foot of the wall. By the time the ballista crew was frantically trying to reload, he had already grabbed onto a protrusion in the stonework, scaling several meters of wall in a few fluid motions.
The two Godrick Soldiers on the battlements clearly hadn't expected an enemy to close in so quickly. One of them had just shoved a new bolt into the breech when it looked up to see a pair of terrifyingly calm eyes.
Linn flicked his wrist, and Bloodhound's Fang drew a dark red arc through the air.
Squelch!
The head hit the floor.
The other soldier tried to raise its sword, but Linn was already in its face. He slammed his small buckler forward, precisely striking the soldier's wrist to stagger its movement. Following up instantly, Bloodhound's Fang drove upward, cleanly skewering the soldier through the jaw.
The entire process was seamless, devoid of any wasted movement. From scaling the wall to neutralizing both ballistae, less than five seconds had passed.
Below the wall, Ais stood silent, her golden eyes reflecting every single one of Linn's movements. It wasn't a display of overwhelming power, but a perfect utilization of timing, distance, and the environment. Every roll and every dash had been calculated perfectly.
"Alright, it's safe up here," Linn's voice called down from the wall. "You guys can come up."
Tione helped the still-groaning Tiona up, and together with Lefiya, they cautiously climbed the wall.
Just as they found their footing and tried to catch their breath, the clack-clack of metal on stone echoed from around the corner of the wall's passage. Three Godrick Soldiers, more heavily built than the ballista crew and armed with swords and shields, marched out with heavy, synchronized steps. Their eyes were hollow, but the bloodlust they radiated was visceral.
"I'll take them!"
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Danmachi: My Primary God is Hidetaka Miyazaki? (Simulpub – Ongoing)
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